More than 80% of Vienna’s population rent the homes they live in
Photograph: Alamy

Vienna effortlessly tops the world’s most liveable city surveys, and for good reason. Its citizens – 1.8 million at the last count – enjoy affordable public transport, abundant greenery and rents UK citizens could only dream of. In fact, acccommodation in Vienna is plentiful and cheap, making it one of the most affordable places to live. In this compact city, dominated by four- and five-storey, walk-up mansion blocks, tenants have been known to snag flats with palace views, free heating and Alps mineral water on tap. More than 80% of residents rent, and two-thirds of Viennese citizens live in municipal or publicly subsidised housing. Eight out of ten flats built in the city today are financed by Vienna’s housing subsidy scheme. This quality and range helps push down rental prices, meaning low-paid workers can afford to live in the Austrian capital, even in the city centre. They often live centrally and enjoy its cheap amenities, short commutes and, thanks to a sound economy, jobs – even when renting on the partially regulated private market.

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And that includes public sector workers. “Like others in Vienna, we feel we hit the jackpot even renting privately,” says 30-year-old Austrian nurse, Barbara Hammer, who moved into a handsome neo-gothic flat in the west of the city five years ago.

Hammer, 30, shares the 80-square-metre home, just 15 minutes by tram from the city centre, with her boyfriend, a social services project manager for the Vienna local authority.

Hammer’s total rental costs are €560 a month. That’s just under £500, and 18% of her take-home pay, which compares to the 50% an average worker renting in the UK pays and 79% of take-home pay that London workers spend on rent.

“I’ve had several nursing posts in Vienna since moving into this flat and I can say its not just the low cost but the fact I could walk to work for shifts that I love. Another job I had was 20 minutes away by public transport. Especially with night shifts, living handily for work is priceless,” she says. “I really appreciate how compact Vienna is.”

Housing charity Shelter describes Labour’s proposals for England and London as more rent stabilisation than actual rent control. And even a recently launched Scottish model, which proposes some limits on rent increases, would only contain, not reduce, rental costs. But the charity says rent controls would lead to a mass sell-off of buy-to-let homes, thereby reducing the vital rental housing stock further.

Not a problem, it seems, in Vienna with its plethora of social housing – a key, it seems, to making a living rent achievable.

With rent caps and an abundance of social housing, crucially here landlords are reluctant to pack in their game. “It is nonsense that low rents will lead to mostly empty homes,” says Wolfgang Kirnbauer, chairman of campaign group Tenant Protection Vienna.

Where rent controls do work, many Viennese agree, is in tandem with Vienna’s vast offering of unghettoised, social housing and an aggressive policy to add more of these homes.

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Vienna spends more than €570m a year on subsidising, constructing and preserving public housing despite having a population nearly eight times smaller than the UK capital. Annual government funding for affordable housing in London, with a population of around 8.7m, is only around £500m, less than half the amount spent in 2009/10 and London’s mayor, Sadiq Khan, says this needs to increase to 2.7bn a year to prevent the housing crisis from getting worse. Vienna also wants to do more, last year committing to increasing annual housing production by 30% in order to meet demand.

“It’s been so very important to be close to my working place and that is possible in Vienna (especially after the night shift),” says Hammer.

“Tenancy regulations are so important for living sanely, so, yes, I’m a big fan of rent controls and of Vienna. If I had to spend 79% of my income [on rent, like in London] then I think I’d have to leave Vienna because that’s insanely expensive,” she says.